Tag Archives: hacking

lately I have been gathering a bit of fun toys for “penetration testing” one of the more impressive pieces I recently picked up was a wifi yagi antenna I picked up for under $10!

While expectations weren’t very high for this antenna with it coming from Ebay, and being under $10, after getting it I am truly surprised at the quality of the antenna. It is well tuned to 2.4ghz and is actually 25dBi gain as advertised (tested on an Agilent E8364c network analyzer) and after bolting on a cheap table top camera tripod I now have a very nice little piece of gear.

There is a public hotspot near my house that I was previously barely able to connect to and I could just barely pull up my email using my laptops stock antennas. After hooking this antenna up to my new Alfa AWUS036NHR 2,000mW USB network adapter I now have a perfect signal and can stream Youtube ad Netflix without issue. The only issue that one may have with an antenna like this is that it is a directional antenna that requires you to point the antenna in the direction of the access point you are trying to connect with. It is not difficult to do though because there are plenty of programs available that test signal strength. Without ever knowing where This public access point is located I was able to point my antenna in its direction by connecting to the hotspot and spinning the antenna slowly until I found what direction had the best signal strength.

This is also a really great tool for finding what networks are in your area because With a high gain antenna I can now pick up about 3 times as many networks than I could previously.

By using a directional antenna instead of the stock Dipole antenna that the network adapter comes with I am able to take advantage of a little known exception the the FCC’s rules that allows for a 60 watt wifi link. check out this episode of Hak5 for more information.

Prototype #1 for Magnetic Sense Trainer

I though it would be cool to make a way to train the magnetic sense gained through implanting a magnet in your finger. The idea is that this trainer will be plugged in to a frequency generator so that a specific and known signal can be injected into the device and then can be felt through the magnetic implant in order to train the body to differentiate between different signals, amplitudes, etc. For this prototype I decided to use an audio TSSR pigtail for the input so that I could plug the device in to my cell phone to feel different songs, much the same you would by holding your magnet implant next to a speaker. Next I will make TSSR to BNC cable in order to interface with a frequency generator.

Building the trainer is fairly easy to build (see schematic above) for anyone who would like to replicate one for themselves. However, I would highly suggest buying your parts online because purchasing them from radio shack will run you nearly $70 and you will have to get lucky and hope that they actually carry IC's at all. But I have a pretty good one near my house that has a pretty larger stock of components and they had everything I needed.

For anyone looking to build one for themselves the voice coil is just a bunch of enamel wire that was wrapped around a 9v battery and bound with electrical tape. This could work better with professional voice coils. You can buy voice coils online or pull them out old speakers if you do now want to make one yourself.